art

And so another era of radio silence. This particular site may have lost whatever blood was going to it, but I still feel the need for some kind of outlet. Something broader, something I can throw out there, regardless of anyone everything actually seeing it.

Today, I need it’s help to figure some things out.

I resigned from my job in July. There were many reasons and I share some of those with others. Ultimately I’ve come to realise that I’ve never taken any risks, and I feel like I’m stagnating. I have a little money, so I’ve decide to take some time and figure out what I’m actually doing.

I’ve pursued two main approaches. My original focus has been on a teaching English diploma; with an eye towards finding work while travelling abroad. A very logical and ambitious goal for me. Early on I maintained a huge amount of enthusiasm for this project, and I’ve been taking it very seriously. However, over time the process has become more and more of a drudge.

The qualification is earned through completion of two online courses and 20 hours of practical classroom experience. I managed to negotiate six months to complete everything – I’ve passed the practical component and completed 60% of Course A. The online parts involve units followed by ‘Progress Checks’ followed by a handful of ‘Checkpoints’ (essentially exams/coursework for the relevant units). I’ve halted at Checkpoint 2. Yes, they are challenging and require you to knuckle down a little more, but everything you need to pass them is in the unit materials. I just cannot motivate myself to push on.

You can plow through the units themselves very quickly, but I’ve increasingly found the process more and more unsatisfying. Yes all this work could lead to something amazing, but one problem I’ve always had is pursuing things that could take me away from where I am rather than work on who I am. Even on the other side of the world, I’d still be carrying me, and this realisation is unsettling.

I’m in my third decade (or Ryan 4.0 as I pretentiously consider it) and I’m yet to figure out what I want. All I know is I struggle with ties – good or bad, everything is shackles. Right now I want to play by my own rules, I want to focus on what I want and only satisfy obligations to myself. I’ve done a great deal of work the last few years: learned a lot, tested myself, achieved many things I would never previously believed possible. But I can no longer ignore that the enduring thread has been, for longer than I care to dwell on, that I am miserable and feel empty inside.

At the risk of turning this into a therapy session, I’ve been through some pretty fucked up shit. There are many many people who have it way worse, but for my part I don’t feel it’s unreasonable to note that I’ve had more than my fair share. For so long now I feel like I’ve been bleeding out; head up, marching on but increasingly limp.

The second approach has involved film. For the longest time after university, I did nothing related to film-making. Eventually I began writing CD/gig/book/film reviews for a sadly defunct magazine called Nocturnal. Recently, thanks to contacts made during that period, I’ve become typing for a website called Filmwerk. Unpaid work but well worth it. I get to see movies for free, at home and at screenings, many in advance of their theatre releases. I’m making contacts and it’s exciting to see where this could lead.

Alongside this, I’m involved with a film podcast, the first episode of which will be released soon. I also want to make my own videos/podcasts/features, for which I’ve created my own site (Violet Cause). This all ties into the conundrum of my life right now – I previously had a stable job, a career, one which I was pretty good at. I was making a living but increasingly felt like I was imploding. I could pursue a career taking me abroad but to do a job I’m not especially energised by. Then I could pursue things which tap into what I love but offer little or no security.

This isn’t an uncommon puzzle, but I have to be conscious of the fact that I tend to detonate when things feel far beyond my control. Basically I need to find reasons to keep this thing going on my own terms, because I want to keep going.

Yes I’ve been inactive on here for a while: work has taken over more and more of my time and energy. Things came to a head this Monday however. I took an overdose of lorazepam.

The following day I wrote this, as my attempt to iron out my thoughts. Put simply, I don’t understand why I did it. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

Earlier my GP asked if I was depressed. Honestly I wasn’t. I most definitely did not want to return to work, so that’s something to stab at. But as my mother pointed out, I’ve been coming home from work for weeks, stating how I’m enjoying bookselling again. And I have been. However none of this changes the fact that there’s the parallel dimension – this alternate universe within my head saturated with white noise and hyper-thought and erratic compulsions.

I’ve been drinking more and more. Self-medication is the prevalent term I believe. The sense of release, the comfort; but also the trangression. Acting normal, functioning while under the influence. What’s fascinating/scary is that I can go off piste stone cold.

I call it the “Cold Flame”. Inside of me there’s this energy; something wondrous and beautiful and beneficial. But its most definitely a dangerous gift – sometimes my mind works every angle, turning things over and over and over and over. Simulating things which have happened, haven’t happened, could happen, can’t.

My eyes glow. Flames emanate from my hands. I’ll look over my shoulder and converse with my thoughts rather than merely think them. We are an army a million as many as your own (though there is sometimes sedition in the ranks). That “crazy” guy rambling to himself on the street? Hello. There’s a little more subtlety in my discourse, but if the lift door opens at the right time I’ll be there running my nails down the walls; clutching my head and waiting out the latest cacophony.

You may hear “We” instead of “I.”

I register people’s eye movements, lip twitches, the way they shuffle their feet or move their arms. The thoughts, concerns, opinions and emotions of others flood torrentially into my mind. I’m not deluded or arrogant enough to claim telepathy but hey, just because you’re not a bat, doesn’t mean you can’t hang upside down.

I won’t call it an epiphany. Lightbulbs can’t take this long to come on. Call it a lingering, teasing subconscious knowing.

Ask me about my earliest memories and all I can summon up are impressions. Emotions, colours, oblique images of sunlight and green leaves and running running running. Imagination is a good word. In my head. Always in my mind.

My earliest cohesive memory is of the day my father left home. Chasing after him as he charged through the front door. Mum and dad had spent what felt like days in their room. I walked in at one point and was immediately turned out again. Memories are unreliable at the best of times. This is what I recall.

Divorcing couples is mundane. The significance of this event has less to do with the details and the drama. For me, it was the moment I had to confront a world outside of myself.

I worshipped my father. He was funny, kind, knowledgable, creative. Over the years I resented my mother because she dealt in what’s practical, what’s necessary; while it was all magic with him. Over time I matured and became wise to the wonder in her too, as well as appreciating the sacrifices and true value of everything she had done for me and my brother. I can’t say I ever hated my father. I resented what followed in his wake.

Calling it “The Damage” may be a little extreme. My comic strip mentality wants to call it an “activation event” – a shock preceding a critical change. Looking back I consider that my whole life has been about the fissure between my outer and inner worlds: again a fairly mundane struggle, but more overt in people “like us”.

The other night I was casually regarding my toes. Picturing what my feet would look like with certain ones cut off. Considering the permutations and how my walking would be affected. I haven’t cut myself in nearly ten years but I think about it every day. When I wake up and before I go to sleep. My right arm, which took the brunt of all the Red back in the day, feels heavy. Sometimes like lead; and I just leave it hanging it at my side as I walk

Is there any worth in writing a suicide note, even if you have no cause or intention to follow up on its promise? Should it be something everyone does – setting out the reasons you want or need it to stop, in the hope that you’re heading off trouble ahead of time? Sign offs have never appealed to me, because you can never cover everything and honestly why would you leave that behind? Something tangible, crafted in your misery, tainting the fingertips of those you’ve left behind.

I won’t call it an epiphany, because deep down I’ve always known. I’m waiting for it to stop. That it’ll end “before my time” seems inevitable to me. I cannot cross the divide – I’m still that little boy caught between two worlds, and the bleed is too much to take on sometimes. I have to be this way because all bases must be covered.

News about the loss of Robin Williams has opened a deep well of mourning for and gratitude to a remarkable performer. His diversity and talent won him plaudits and affection the world over. I’ve often found that people have a particular Robin Williams they love – for some he’s Mork from Ork, my sister-in-law adores Mrs Doubtfire. For me he will always be Genie.

His family have rightly asked for their privacy to be respected at this difficult time. A statement referring to his recent struggles with depression remains the wellspring of speculation about what has happened. Further details will emerge, the news cycle will endure a little longer and many debates will be had.

One thought came to my mind when I heard the news: wealth and fame offer no guarantees against misery and torment. A commonly held notion amongst those with mental health challenges is that their lot would improve if they could afford private treatment and regular sessions with an independent therapist. Access to medication would no longer carry any financial penalties.

The logic holds, overall, but a story like this is important because it reminds us there are no quick fixes, and no one cookie-cutter strategies can be expected to work. We don’t know how Williams coped with his condition, and personally I feel it a little ghoulish to speculate in this forum.

All I will say is that we must be mindful of the fact that sometimes we can only fight so hard. But the fight is worth it, and their are so many pathways and approaches to pursue. And we cannot forget that sharing any suicide’s fate is never guaranteed either.

No two people can inhabit the same world. Beliefs, opinions and prejudices distort reality the way mass warps the path of light. Circumstance can mean that, though we might agree that chair is red; it’s green to someone with a specific form of colour blindness. They may concede that an absence or dysfunction of long wavelength cones in the eye causes deuteranopia; but ultimately to them, the chair is green.

I’m no philosopher and I’m certainly no scientist. I simply cannot escape the significance of an analogy like this. The chair is green in the subjective. It is only red by consensus. Let’s find an alternate dimension where deutans are in the majority – now what are you sitting on?

Colour Blind Awareness states that, globally, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women live with some form of this condition. 8% of my gender live their lives with dissonant chroma. My cousin ranks amongst them, as did my maternal grandfather. That we’re not inundated with stories of cars piling through traffic lights because of misread signals is deeply encouraging. A mutation which could dramatically impact upon the day-to-day of a great many people has become well managed and almost completely anonymous.

In 2005 researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne used multidimensional scaling (MDS) to explore ‘the colour dimension that is private to the deuteranomalous observer.’ The study emphasised an important correlation between “colour normal” and deuteranomalous observers – that they are both formally trichromatic (requiring three primary lights to ‘match all possible spectral power distributions.’) Despite the differences in colour perception, there is no inherent deficit or dysfunction:

MDS studies of anomalous trichromats have, however, always had a phenotypic bias: stimuli have been selected to be discriminable for the normal observer and the anomalous space has typically been found to be contracted compared to the normal. Such results reinforce the categorization of anomalous trichromats as ‘color deficient’, but this represents the viewpoint of the majority phenotype.

Interestingly the study refers to a potential evolutionary advantage gifted to anomalous/alternative trichromats. Research suggests that the efficacy of camouflage is threatened by ATs, particularly when it resembles natural foliage or terrain. Food sources and predators may become easier to clock; practical applications expressed in some primate species. Genetic drift may have allowed such individuals to make an advantageous contribution to our earliest, socialised ancestors. Hunter/gatherer parties including, though not wholly comprising ATs may have been ahead of the curve.

As expressions of the worth and wonder of re-thinking how we determine what is and isn’t a disability – as well as opening eyes to the potential benefits of any “anomaly” – discussions of colour blindness offer a delightful elegance and simplicity. Clearly, on the spectrum of what we consider disabilities, disorders, diseases…et cetera, not all animals are going to be equal. Issues will never be (ahem) black and white.

All I would say is consider the alternatives whenever you consider or encounter anyone with anomalous expressions or characteristics. Maybe you’ll find yourself ahead of the curve too.